Texas IndyCar: Newgarden leads final practice, Harvey shunts

Harvey, who has qualified only 24^th yet was fastest of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan-Hondas in a strangely poor event for the team so far, was on his 26^th lap of the 1.5-mile track in final practice when his car understeered in the middle of Turn 2.

Harvey downchanged, the #45 Hy-Vee car started oversteering, and its right-rear wheel appeared barely to kiss the wall, but it was enough to unsettle the car and wrench it out of Harvey’s control. It looped around and across the track to make heavy contact with the inside wall and then slide along the back straight to Turn 3.

Thankfully, the likeable Harvey, who struck a wall in St. Petersburg, too, was able to step from the car unaided, and the RLL team started to build up the spare tub – Harvey’s car for the Indy 500, as NBC Sports revealed – for tomorrow’s XPEL 375.

By contrast, Harvey’s teammates had a somewhat reassuring session, their cars clearly quick in the draft, with rookie Christian Lundgaard fourth and Graham Rahal seventh, but coming from the back of the field will be difficult without taking major strategy risks, given the difficulty of passing here.

That said, before this final practice, seven drivers did endeavor to open up a second lane through the turns with a 30min session that involved Helio Castroneves, Will Power, Takuma Sato, Rahal, Ed Carpenter, Pato O’Ward and polesitter Felix Rosenqvist running the high line – exceptionally high line in the case of Castroneves. The results appeared somewhat inconclusive, in that the drivers could keep their cars away from the wall, but were still having to feather the throttle in order to make it through, thus ensuring the high line was slower.

Come FP2 proper, Team Penske-Chevrolet’s two-time IndyCar champion Newgarden went to the top of the speed charts on his 23^rd of 73 laps, whereas his closest pursuer Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda set his best time in the draft on his 60^th of 65 laps.

Polesitter Felix Rosenqvist proved his car was stable in the draft with third fastest ahead of Lundgaard, while Colton Herta led the Andretti Autosport-Honda contingent in fifth.

Takuma Sato of Dale Coyne Racing with RWR-Honda proved his quali pace could be backed up by race pace with sixth fastest.

As well as Lundgaard, two other drivers relatively unfamiliar with Texas Motor Speedway – aside from testing – Romain Grosjean and Devlin De Francesco, crept into the Top 10, the latter surviving an alarming tail-happy moment out of Turn 4 to draft past his new teammate.

Jimmie Johnson, who will be making his oval IndyCar debut, was a commendable 13^th on a track where he won seven times in a NASCAR Cup car. He was also the busiest driver this afternoon, turning 100 laps.

Green flag for the XPEL 375 waves at 11.45 local (Central) time on Sunday.